Daily Archives: 08/19/2014

Essential Coverage Of The Events In Ferguson As Protests Continue

When, last Thursday, photographs of a protest march with police escort and newly instated Captain Ron Johnson hugging a protester came out of Ferguson, Missouri, it felt as if the worst of the tension between the police and the community had passed and the militarized police equipment had been put away for good. But as quickly as the discord faded that night, it has returned and now reaches into the tenth day after unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Here’s a roundup of more key stories from the situation which continues to unfold:

Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times. The autopsy, conducted by Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, at the request of Michael Brown’s family, found that he was shot two times in the head and four times in the right arm.

How We’d Cover Ferguson If It Happened In Another Country. The crisis began a week ago in Ferguson, a remote Missouri village that has been a hotbed of sectarian tension. State security forces shot and killed an unarmed man, which regional analysts say has angered the local population by surfacing deep-seated sectarian grievances. Regime security forces cracked down brutally on largely peaceful protests, worsening the crisis.

BOTTOM LINE: “Let us seek to heal, rather than to wound each other,” said President Obama in a press conference this afternoon addressing the crisis in Ferguson. As the escalating tensions in the Missouri suburb reveal deep mistrust, anger, and division, more than ever we need unity and reconciliation on the part of law enforcement and those they have sworn to serve and protect.

Thanks to the women in this room and people all across the country, we worked really hard — and it’s now been more than three years since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act and I signed it into law. It’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court upheld the law under the Constitution. And, by the way, six months ago, the American people went to the polls and decided to keep going in this direction. So the law is here to stay.

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way.

They exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others. They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.